Four Mainers, including the captain, were on board the ship. They are Capt. Michael Davidson, Mike Holland, Danielle Randolph and Dylan Meklin.

Family members of the missing crew members were notified about the end to the search earlier in the day.

"I came to terms with this a few days ago. There is too much devastation. I have strong faith," said Laurie Bobillot, the mother of missing crew member Danielle Randolph.

"What I find in peace, as I envisioned, the entire (crew) of the El Faro that went down in the ship together and then that's their final resting place. If they can't be with their family then they are with this family," Deb Roberts, the mother of crew member Michael Holland said.

The Coast Guard said no survivors have been found despite their efforts.

"Even thought it's not the answer we wanted, we have answers now. We always hold out for a miracle, but it's nice to have at least an answer and to be able to move on to the next step," Roberts said.

"I want the families to really now how committed we were to finding their loved ones," Capt. Mark Fedor said. "These are professional mariners who were lost and those are our kin."

"The Coast Guard did everything imaginable. They wanted so badly to bring our family members back to us," Roberts said.

Dinh-Zarr said investigators will look at every electronic transmission from El Faro, including cellphones.

"That's what our investigators are very good at. We have a long history of looking at data from cellphones and all the modes as well as all electronic data," Dinh-Zarr said.

She said the NTSB has a lot of experience with these investigations.

"In Hurricane Sandy there was a ship, the Bounty, that went down. We investigated that a few years ago. A ship of this size, however, and with potentially this much casualty, is fortunately fairly rare. The last time was in 1983," Dinh-Zarr said.

Dinh-Zarr said had a message for Mainers watching the search and investigation very closely.

"We know that the maritime community is a really tight-knit one. Our hearts go out to them. We have a lot of experience in this area and we will do the best job possible to get as much information as we can," she said.

Dinh-Zarr said her team expects to be be in Jacksonville for seven-10 days.

She said on Tuesday investigators will not determine or speculate on probable cause while on the scene. Without knowing exactly where the ship is, the agency plans to use interviews, marine logs, maintenance records and engineering aspects to conduct the investigation.

Dinh-Zarr said the only way to figure out the timeline of events from the vessel's reported mechanical problem and flooding and whether one led to another, was part of an existing mechanical problem or was weather-related is to find the ship's voyage data recorder.

"The voyage data recorder is an instrument that activates upon touching water, so once it is actually in the water it will begin pinging and it has a battery life of 30 days. The question is has the pinging been heard? And the answer is, not to my knowledge," Dinh-Zarr said.

The Coast Guard released new pictures Tuesday afternoon showing scattered debris recovered near El Faro's last known location in the Bahamas.